


the dark before dawn

by ninemoons42



Series: l'amoureux [3]
Category: Penny Dreadful (TV), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst and Cuddling, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Demon-Possessed Jyn, Demonic Possession, F/M, Ghosts, Gothic, Supernatural Combat, Supernatural Elements, Team as Family, Werewolf Cassian, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 06:58:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12151158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: Cassian encounters a ghostly visitor, and then has his life saved by Jyn.The two events are actually not related.





	the dark before dawn

The clock tolls the hours once again, and this time he feels the tears fall into his hair, as he counts those awful lonely echoes in the night: one, two, three, four.

And try as he might, scent the air as he might, some part of him refusing to release its clawed hold on the senses of the beast that now slumbers within him, he can still only know that he is alone in Grandage-Desert -- the others have gone to their appointed tasks, and after midnight, those tasks can only mean one thing.

One night from the last sight of the moon at its full: he lies weak and smothered and ravenous in the little windowless chamber, surrounded by fresh counterpane and lavender-scented beddings, and he cannot be still. He cannot sleep. He cannot rouse himself.

Certainly all the wounds he had before the night of the Change are gone: but gone are those wounds only to be replaced by the fresh hurts he inflicts upon himself, the fresh hurts that his beast inflicts upon his human body. No prey to hunt and run to ground. No prey to feast upon. No blood on his muzzle, drying and sticking to his skin -- 

The echoes of four bells after midnight.

He’s lain here for a day, and he still can’t gather the strength to rise, and he is worse than useless -- he thinks he hears nothing but the whispering mutter of that great dark cloak that walks abroad with its scythe and its blade -- and would he welcome that shadow were it to come to him now? Would he give over and fall onto his back? Would he bare his throat to death?

And for a long moment he does think he can hear those noiseless steps, that ghastly tread, closer and closer, through the door as though it didn’t exist -- 

The smell of thorns and guttering candles, the smell of rot just before it fastens onto a corpse with its hideous jaws -- 

Cassian gasps, opens his eyes, rolls himself off the bed and lands in a crouch, pain whirling in his mind, pain that grasps the very heart of him with its claws. Still he makes himself raise his head. Still he makes himself regard that which has invaded his rooms. Still he fights to keep his gaze and his voice steady. “Speak,” he growls, and the apparition that seems to have picked up his pocket-watch from the table beside the bed starts, and turns toward him.

He snarls.

The form of a woman. White raiment, and a white veil draped over her head. She is twice veiled, for she is no real human being -- he glances at her feet, bare beneath the hems of her plain white gown -- those feet leave no impressions in the worn rug. 

As he regards her, she seems to straighten her shoulders. Seems to raise her hand for the sake of revealing herself: and when he sees her face, it’s all he can do not to cry out a name.

For the ghostly woman has the very appearance of the present Miss Erso herself: or it would be Jyn, it would be her down to the turn of her eyebrow and the slivered frown curving her mouth, if she didn’t look -- older, somehow. Clear lines in that spectral face, lines radiating from the corners of her eyes, lines framing her stern mouth. 

Her eyes, too, are only akin to Jyn’s, iron-gray.

So Cassian says, “If you’re naught more than a trick -- ”

“Cassian Andor,” the woman says.

Not Jyn’s voice: something more worn down than that. Something more pained. 

“My daughter grieves for me still. And for her father.”

Cassian blinks, and thinks of the piece of jewelry that Jyn wears at all times.

The spider-cameo opens to reveal two miniature paintings. Only glimpses of them, for him, for he’s only ever seen Jyn work the hidden latch a handful of times. He knows there are two paintings, and he knows that one of the paintings seems to have been of a woman, veiled and bridally attired.

Is this that woman?

Is that painting -- this woman -- Jyn’s lost mother?

“I come because my daughter is in need of her protector,” the woman implores now.

“Where,” Cassian hears himself snarl.

And he tries to get to his feet, and he almost falls from the pain that lashes his nerves anew.

Still he braces himself on the bed, and still he fights to look the woman in her spectral eyes. “And how do I know you’re no trick of that same enemy they’re all dealing with now?” 

He knows, a little, of those enemies. What little Jyn can bear to tell him, never without some kind of strong drink or even stronger drug to hand: some spiderwebbed bottle, not from the cabinet in which her protectors keep their liquor, but from a perfectly ordinary-looking cupboard in the kitchen. The spare movements of her fingers as she rolls a red-tinged leaf into a cheroot-shape, and the acrid fumes it produces, that fills her voice with a hoarse languor, but snuffs the life out of her words.

“Such things that I know, that I’ve seen, such things as I’ve been made to open the door to,” she’s said, before whispering about walking through a gate of human-forms writhing together, twisted together, agony in every face, blood on every mouth --

He’d made himself listen. He’d made himself stay for the whole recital, and not just on that night but on others as well.

Fighting off the nightmares in his sleep, with the fug of her smoking clinging to his hands, clinging like the remnants of blood and barren feasts -- 

He tries to think of the woman-shape in his room as one of those poor twisted victims from the visions Jyn’s described to him. Victim and perpetrator both.

The woman only weeps, soundlessly. Wrings her hands. “My daughter, my daughter,” she moans, and when she collapses Cassian stares at her in shock, stares at the place on the rug where she was standing, the place on the rug that is empty now but for the despair that she’s left behind, the long mourning cry.

Jyn’s mourning, in her mother’s despairing wail.

He would howl, too, if he could: but he makes himself move, instead. Tread past the place on the rug where he’d been speaking to the spirit who claimed Jyn as her daughter. Down the steps though his vision wavered with every heavy step. Out the door, only just remembering to lock its doors behind him, in order to keep the spells of protection woven into its walls unbroken and whole.

Out, trusting his heart, for he has no knowledge of where the others must be. He has to rely on his beast to track them, and in turn the beast drives him forward despite the agony crashing through his bones and his sinews: on, on, through the streets that are still untouched by the dawn, that are still shrouded in midnight-shadows, until he can -- he can hear them, now!

The unmistakable crash and clash of blades! That must be the men to whom Jyn defers as her protectors, that must be Sir Baze with his great curved weapon and Sir Chirrut with the slender sharp-edged sword that he carries concealed in his staff!

The steady voice shouting into the night, building walls and walls of -- power and prayer! That firm intonation of belief, punctuated here and there with the sounds of glass shattering! That must be the brother to whom Jyn cleaves, and who cleaves to Jyn, that must be Bodhi raising the powerful spirits of his heritage in protection and in self-defense!

And the voice that Cassian is not hearing: the voice that is silent now!

Gates, gates thrown up between him and those whom he must try to reach: they are as nothing to his beast and he throws himself into that place where the others are, with the beast roaring within him and his own voice rising to double that challenge -- 

He sees her.

Black lace ringing her throat and her wrists. One of her hands, reaching out to him -- he doesn’t mean to brush by her, he’ll greet her properly later, and he’ll make her his amends and his courtesies: but now he can see what they’re fighting and now he can see his own duel.

White-shrouded forms completely different from the woman-shape that had visited him: the veils do nothing to hide the bared fangs, the hideous grins, the blood dripping into their eyes.

Not even a worthy challenge to his beast -- and he wades into the fray, the others falling in to guard his flanks. He can hear the ringing song of Sir Baze’s sword as it flashes; he can hear the dancing cadence in Sir Chirrut’s steps and the movement of his sword. 

He can hear Bodhi advancing behind him: Bodhi who clanks with every step but never errs as he throws another bottle of blessed water, to the frenzied snarls of the enemy.

And then he hears it.

Feels the hairs all over his body stand straight up with shock.

The pressure in his mind grows, sharpens, like claws digging into him, like teeth meeting and his mind or his soul or his heart rent on the edges -- no, no, he can’t, he won’t, if he gives in now he’ll be lost and he’ll lose the beast, he’ll be broken -- 

Still he roars. Still he drives himself forward. Swipe of his arm and he’s knocking Sir Chirrut away to safety. Kick to the side and he’s pushing Sir Baze out of the looming shadow ahead. He looks over his shoulder, flashes teeth and his feral eye in the direction of Bodhi -- he sees him stop, back away, and that’s enough.

Cassian crouches low to the ground, snarling, wholly in his human body, far more fragile than the beast, far less powerful: it is not the night of the Change, and there is no shape of the moon in the sky to give him its sharp deceitful light.

Only himself, here, and the monster that’s come out to meet them, drawn out at last.

Hulking shadow low to the ground. Pale grotesquerie of blank white eyes. No lips: just a bleeding gash of a mouth ringed with blade-shaped teeth. Improbable wings grafted onto the shoulders, still leaking fresh gore onto stained skin. Feathers shaped like swords, falling to the stones in the street. 

Hands reach for Cassian -- his mind recoils from the insane sight, too many fingers and each finger tipped in a blood-red eye!

Thought flees entirely. He calls on his instincts and his sense of the beast that screams in the night, that must rend, must kill, and here is an enemy he can fight, here is something he’s permitted to kill, the hot blood and the sweet screaming -- 

Not the beast within him that attacks: only him. He can be enough. He can do this, with the beast driving him, with the others to think of -- 

He’s thrown aside, swept away, and he hears himself laugh, high unreasonable, and he leaps forward again: this time he draws blood and chunks of matter away, and he doesn’t think to lick his lips, doesn’t think about any kind of anticipation any more: this is not a chase, this is not a game, this is one for that grim scythe-bearer -- 

He strikes, and he is struck, and he snarls every time and gets back up. 

Until the hulking thing shrieks at him and -- steps on him! Pins him down! Vile weight on his throat! He can’t breathe, he can’t get up -- he can suddenly smell blood on his own skin -- his own life rushing to stain the ground upon which he’s been thrown --

He sees horror in the faces of the others.

And he sees her.

Not just with his own human eyes.

The side of him that is a man sees her black lace, sees the white-knuckled grip on her skirts, sees the tremble in her boots as she moves forward.

The side of him that is a man sees her mouth pinned into its stern thin line.

The side of him that is a man sees her eyes, sees the straight line of her eyebrows. Only a slight downturn of her mouth: more than enough for him to smell the rage that cracks through her blank expression, the pure rage that isn’t just a woman’s rage, isn’t just a human’s rage --

Here the side of him that is a man turns away. Here that side of him cowers. 

So it is the beast inside him that looks at her. That looks to her.

And in the eyes of the beast: Jyn is still a small human-shape in the world.

But there is something else within her and behind her, threaded into the very shape of her, looming over her. Her own pair of wings, seeming to reach up towards the stars that he cannot see, fathomless black in the still-brooding night.

Man and beast shy away when she speaks: not in human words, not in human languages. A torrent and an outrage of guttural sound-shapes pours from her mouth and in response, Cassian’s enemy keens and cries and wails, and the sounds of denial ought to have broken the night, ought to have roused all of the city from their beds, ought to have rent minds and hearts into shattered pieces.

Try as he might, there’s nowhere for Cassian to run: he can only be here and he can only listen, as the power of Jyn and the powers within her assert their awful dominance.

Black shadows in the world pool around the boots on her feet and rise, rise, to the very tips of the shapes like wings rising from her shoulders, and those shadows have voices too: they taunt Cassian’s enemy, they scream in contempt and in outrage.

The beast within him howls, as well, adding its voice to the attack.

And it’s a sudden relief that crashes upon him when the hulking creature -- shatters, like rotten bones dashed onto stone.

He’s free! Man and beast alike, free -- he scrambles to his hands and knees and spits and the hulking creature’s minions scurry into the night, shrieking defeated rage -- 

“You would do well to stay here.”

Human words.

He has to think for a long moment to understand what is being said to him.

He blinks, stupidly, at Sir Chirrut and a gnarled hand on his shoulder.

“Even now my beloved is moving to intercept those other enemies, so we can make a clean sweep of this night’s work. It doesn’t do to leave things unfinished, don’t you agree?”

Cassian nods.

“Bodhi and I will stay here to wait for him.”

He finally finds his breath and his voice. “And what would you have me do?”

Instead of answering, Sir Chirrut only tilts his head.

And Cassian sees Jyn once again.

A huddled shape in the world, with her arms wrapped around herself. Her gaze pointed straight down to the ground.

He crawls to her. Head bowed, says, quietly, “Thank you. Because of you I’m all right. Thank you.”

“You should not have ventured out here,” she says, and he hears the edge in her voice that is not chiding.

A glance at her mouth confirms it: she’s worried for him.

So he forces himself to stand, and to bow to her, for she likes it when he’s gallant. “May I escort you home?” And, more softly, he adds, “I have something to say to you.”

Immediately her eyes rise to meet his. Renewed vigilance in her face, that he can’t help but look on so gratefully. “Please tell me we are safe in that house still.”

“I think we might be. But I cannot judge in these matters. I must defer to your knowledge, to your judgment.”

She holds his hand all the way back to the house, and she doesn’t let him go once they’re safely in the foyer. “Speak to me,” she says, and lays her other hand on his shoulder.

The weight of her on his skin ought to be nothing, ought to be less than insubstantial, but it is more than enough to make him lean towards her, and he is nothing but grateful for being allowed to do so.

In halting voice, he describes the woman who had appeared in his chamber.

“Forgive me the intrusion,” he says, “but I once had occasion to see the miniatures in your cameo.” He motions to the crystal spider on her breast. “The woman looked like one of the miniatures. And she spoke of you as her daughter.”

Her mouth rounds, and the words must die on her tongue.

And all she says is, “Mother?”

She looks so small and so lost, then, such a far cry from the woman who fought tonight’s battle -- 

When she gathers herself once again he can see the strain on her features, the jump in the muscles along her jawline, the tear in the corner of her eye that doesn’t fall onto her cheek.

“We must investigate,” she says.

So he follows her into his own chambers and he points to the spot on the rug where the woman had appeared, and he watches Jyn drop neatly to the floor, sitting, seemingly comfortable with her skirts spread out about her, and she passes one hand over the worn material and thinks. 

“I can try to call her,” she finally says. “But it will have to wait. I am -- ” Here she looks away. 

And there is only one thing he could do, he thinks, one thing that he could offer to her, after she had saved his life.

He carefully sits down next to her. She is a line of warmth when she leans toward him, from below his shoulder to just at his hip.

“Allow me,” he says, and he watches her face carefully when he wraps his arm around her shoulders, when he pulls her close, so she can safely lean more of her weight into him.

The shadow of resistance passes across her face for only a brief moment, before she turns her cheek into his chest.

He feels the weight of her arms coming to rest around his waist, and he thinks he’d like to pull her into his lap.

Not now, though.

Not when he can hear her breathing slow and steady and still far too controlled, despite the broken edges when she’d said the word _mother_.

Steps in the corridor, moving towards them.

He almost tenses: but it is Bodhi who appears in the open doorway.

Cassian shakes his head, just a little.

“Good night,” Bodhi says, and closes the door.

No lights in here and no windows: only him and her, and he hears her match the rhythm of her breathing to his, and he lowers his mouth to the crown of her head, and doesn’t move any further.

“You let me rest,” she breathes.

“Don’t you need it?” he asks.

“The work -- ”

“Will wait.”

“Not for long.”

“As you say,” and he knows it too. “It will be there, waiting. But it’s waiting to win by turning you into dust. I won’t have that.”

He feels the ghostly pressure of her against his throat, a fleeting touch, quickly gone, but he knows he didn’t imagine it.

As he doesn’t imagine the way she nuzzles into his chest, before her breaths even out, and he can feel that she’s fallen asleep.

Safe with him, and he, too, is safe with her.

**Author's Note:**

> Look me up on tumblr [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
